You think it is good not to have a system in place that punishes companies who violate the principles of net neutrality?

Net neutrality is the very basis of a free market for the internet and with it gone the ISPs would abuse their monopolies and screw over both their customers and their direct competitors as history has shown.

You think it is good not to have a system in place that punishes companies who violate the principles of net neutrality?

Net neutrality is the very basis of a free market for the internet and with it gone the ISPs would abuse their monopolies and screw over both their customers and their direct competitors as history has shown.

I'm confused at how you get to harming free market exchanges by reducing government regulations...

I'm confused at how you get to harming free market exchanges by reducing government regulations...

Because free market assumes no monopolies and unlimited access to said market. ISPs buck that trend (a small number of companies control all access), hence the govt regulation on ensuring access, aka net neutrality.

Hopefully the statements above explain it.

P.S. I hated the name of the rule (it's not descriptive of the issue). A better name would be "price of net access".

Because with NN, ISP have definitely been charging different rates for different amounts of bandwidths - i.e. letting customers pay for faster burgers.

The better analogy would be a restaurant that served food faster from chefs that paid kickbacks to the owner - with the extra money showing up on the menu price.

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Paying different amounts for different speeds/data caps is not a violation of net neutrality as once you've gotten your internet access, anything you do with it is treated the same. It doesn't matter if you're rocking a 14.4 kbps modem, or 1 gbps fiber connection, when you go onto a web page, your traffic is treated the same by everything and everyone else.

Without Net Neutrality, companies could restrict (either banning or slowing) traffic to sites they didn't want to carry information for, and free up or expedite those they want to promote. E.g. Comcast makes a video hosting site, and has unfettered access to all, with faster up/down speeds and no data caps for Comcast customers. However, Comcast users looking to browse YouTube or Twitch find that their speeds are slashed, and they're limited to only 1 hour of video per day. Additionally, Comcast users can't even get onto Vimeo or Giphy. Comcast is kind, though, and for an extra fee, the speed gates on YouTube and Twitch are removed. For even more money, you can lose the time restriction, and gain access to Vimeo. You can't ever get to Giphy, though, because Comcast doesn't own it, and Giphy won't pay Comcast enough to let Comcast subscribers through.

The BK analogy/video is flawed, but it is a decent example, if you pay attention to the first bit - "BK feels they can make more money off their chicken products, so they are restricting Whopper access." That, AND the silly costs (time or money) to get a regular Whopper, are the point of the video, and therein lies the example of why net neutrality is important.

Radio stations and network television are available, at the same quality and with the same information, to anyone who has the equipment to access them. The internet should be no different.

Net Neutrality invokes Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to require all ISPs and any company that provides internet service to register for Broadcasting Licenses from the government and regularly renew them.

Well... what if the FCC doesn't want to renew them? Ah but that's crazy talk, the FCC can't just revoke Broadcasting Licenses on a whim. It would be taken to court within seconds!

But imagine what happens when you're appointed by the president as chairman of the FCC, and shortly after, you get a call from the president. The president tells you that a particular ISP needs to have its license revoked because it's violating federal law. Well, you'd probably want to know what law it's breaking but you don't get an answer, you're simply told to revoke the licence. Then the office phones start ringing and now other government bodies are calling in, all substantiating that yes, in fact, the ISP really is breaking the law.

So you call your lawyer, and ask him to look up all the laws they were talking about to see if the ISP really is violating them. After all, what kind of law would justify such an abuse of power? None, in fact, that you know of. The next thing that will happen is your lawyer will walk into your office and hand you a legal document titled Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S.2692).

The Mission statement "...counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department..."

That's so bizarre, you think to yourself. Usually agencies are created independent from other branches of government, specifically to preserve accountability and dissuade corrupting influences. Why would you bother creating a new independent agency if you're literally going to house it in the White House?

"intergency center"

Ok, so it's a center, of multiple agencies. In the White House...

p. 1,399 (1,441 in PDF) - "The head of the Center... shall be appointed by the President."

...that answers directly to the President? Okay? What exactly is it going to do?

"Maintain, collect, use, and disseminate records for research and data analysis of foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts"

Wait what? Non-state propaganda? What does that mean? Literally everyone not part of the government is not part of the state. And how exactly is propaganda defined? Huh, that's strange... there's no definition in the act. Like it was deliberately omitted so they can just... call it whatever they want. Incredible.

You look up to your lawyer, "How did this go through Congress?"

"It didn't."

The file is titled National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.

This act was hidden inside a 3076 page annual military budget that was pushed to the floor on Christmas Eve of 2017 so nobody would notice it.

"Identify the countries and populations most susceptible to propaganda and disinformation based on information provided by appropriate interagency entities. Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices."

So an act that allows the White House to use "a wide range of technologies and techniques" to influence target populations in order to shape their opinions to refute anything the White House labels as propaganda from any non-government source.

This act, accompanied with the title II classification of internet, allows the President to use any Federal department or agency to suppress information. Thanks to Net Neutrality's Title II, they can order all ISP's to take down "hostile" information and any websites that distribute it. If the ISP refuses, their Title II Broadcasting Licence is legally revoked, they can no longer do business, they go bankrupt, and the government buys out their infrastructure. The government can integrate into the ISPs to censor anything, anywhere, at any time. The ISPs are forced to obey.

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It's not that the idea of Net Neutrality is bad. Sure, all information from all sources should be treated the same on the internet. But the implementation in its current form simply gave way too much power to the government, and you should be thankful it was repealed.

A better way to go about Net Neutrality would be to create a new Title of classification specifically for the internet that both protects all information on the internet, and limits the government's ability to tamper with it.

Because free market assumes no monopolies and unlimited access to said market. ISPs buck that trend (a small number of companies control all access), hence the govt regulation on ensuring access, aka net neutrality.

Hopefully the statements above explain it.

P.S. I hated the name of the rule (it's not descriptive of the issue). A better name would be "price of net access".

Now I may be wrong on this due to misinformation but isn't that monopoly itself caused by earlier government regulations making it harder for smaller isps to succeed?

Now I may be wrong on this due to misinformation but isn't that monopoly itself caused by earlier government regulations making it harder for smaller isps to succeed?

There are a few reasons why this is the case - you will see a few patterns for ISPs around the world.

1, The ISP grew from the telephone company that laid the cables. For obvious reasons you limit which company/s can lay cables, which sets up the initial conditions for monopolistic behaviour.

2, The ISP is an offshoot of a telecoms company/holdings. Because telecoms is considered a matter of strategic importance the govt exerts considerable influence, and generally it's preferred to have control within a few rather than a lot of companies.

3, The ISP is an offshoot of a TV or related broadcast medium company/holdings. Similar to telecoms, since the company owns or has exclusive access to those data "pipes" it's hard to push in a new player.

The legacy of our internet is that it was developed for a strategic reason (redundancy of comms during/after a nuclear attack) and only later was re-purposed for use by community and commercial purposes. Once the incumbents were established, it's harder for newer players to come in (though not impossible).